By making college unaffordable and student loans unbearable, we

“By making college unaffordable and student loans unbearable, we risk deterring our best and brightest from pursuing higher education and securing a good-paying job.” Thus spoke Mark Pocan, a servant of the people and a voice of reason in a time when learning, once the birthright of the free, has become a burden too heavy for many to bear. In these words, he does not merely speak of economics or policy — he speaks of the destiny of a nation. For when a society denies its youth the keys to education, it does not merely limit their potential; it begins to starve its own future. The words of Pocan ring as both warning and lament: that the price of knowledge, when set too high, becomes the price of decline.

In ages past, the wise knew that education was the golden bridge between ignorance and enlightenment, between poverty and prosperity. It was not a privilege but a sacred trust — the flame passed from one generation to the next. Yet in our modern age, this flame flickers beneath the cold winds of debt and inequality. Students, the very promise of tomorrow, emerge from their studies shackled by chains not of iron, but of numbers — loans that follow them for decades, darkening their joy and delaying their freedom. In such a world, many turn away from learning altogether, not for lack of talent, but for lack of means. Thus, the best and brightest — those who could have built, healed, and led — are silenced before their voices can rise.

History itself bears witness to this truth. In the aftermath of the Second World War, America opened the gates of learning through the GI Bill, granting millions of veterans access to higher education. The result was a generation reborn — engineers, teachers, doctors, thinkers — who transformed the nation into a powerhouse of innovation and prosperity. This single act of investment in education yielded more wealth, wisdom, and progress than any weapon or conquest. Yet today, that same nation risks reversing its own triumph, allowing the cost of college to soar beyond the reach of ordinary families. The ladder that once lifted the poor into the middle class now trembles beneath the weight of neglect and greed.

To make college unaffordable is to close the gates of opportunity and build new walls of division. It is to say to a child of promise, “Your dreams are welcome — if you can pay for them.” Such cruelty, though wrapped in bureaucracy, is no less destructive than open oppression. For what is the purpose of a free society if its citizens cannot freely learn? What future can a nation claim when its brightest minds are dimmed by debt before they can shine? The unbearable burden of student loans is not only a financial trap — it is a moral failure, a betrayal of the sacred pact between the young and the old, between those who inherit and those who prepare the inheritance.

Consider the story of a young woman named Sarah, the daughter of factory workers who dreamed of becoming a scientist. She earned her degree, but with it came a mountain of student debt so high that every discovery she made, every hour she worked, felt shadowed by what she owed. She could not start a family, could not buy a home, could not invest in the very future her education had promised. Multiply her story by millions, and you see the silent epidemic of our age — a generation of dreamers trapped in the very system that promised to set them free. The tragedy is not that Sarah failed, but that the system failed her.

Pocan’s words, then, are not only a call for reform, but for renewal — a return to the understanding that education is not a commodity to be sold, but a cornerstone of civilization. To make college accessible is not to give charity, but to invest in the very strength of a nation. When the best and brightest are allowed to learn without fear of ruin, their discoveries feed the economy, their wisdom heals the community, and their spirit uplifts the nation. Every scholar freed from debt becomes a builder of hope; every barrier removed from education is a foundation laid for a better world.

So, my children, hear this lesson and carry it into your hearts: knowledge is the seed of freedom, and freedom demands that all have the chance to grow. A society that truly loves its future will never make learning a luxury. Support those who seek to learn; demand justice for those crushed by debt; and remember that the strength of a people lies not in the wealth of the few, but in the enlightenment of the many. The treasure of a nation is not in its banks, but in its classrooms; not in its markets, but in its minds.

Let every generation, then, vow anew to keep the path of learning open and the price of wisdom light. For as Mark Pocan teaches, when we make education affordable, we do not merely enrich individuals — we secure the very soul of our democracy. Let us, therefore, lift this burden from our youth and give wings to their dreams, that they may rise and carry the torch of knowledge into a brighter dawn for all humankind.